Williams’ new sponsor Gulf says it has plans to go “bigger and better” than it has in its previous involvement in Formula 1.
Gulf were officially announced as a new sponsor of the Williams team in a “long-term” partnership at the reveal of the FW45 livery on Monday.
The oil company’s brand colours have featured on many famous racing car liveries across motorsport over the decades, from the Le Mans winning Porsche 917 to a special one-off livery with McLaren during the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix.
Gulf describe their partnership with Williams as the “next chapter of our iconic motorsport story” and have confirmed they will also support the Williams driver academy and esports teams as part of their partnership.
While Williams’ F1 team and its junior driver programme will use similar liveries this year, Gulf CEO Mike Jones says the company has intentions of highlighting their brand creatively with its new partner.
“Anything we do in the future has got to be bigger and better than before,” Jones told media including RaceFans at the launch of Williams’ 2023 livery.
“We have a lot of Gulf fans around the world. We have a lot of requests for our livery. We want our livery to be special.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“We’re launching a number of fan-centric activation plans. We always feel that Gulf is the fans’ favourite and we really want our fans to be part of that. So of course we’re looking at different solutions for that right across the Formula 1 spectrum and we’ll be launching activation plans in the near future.”
After their last involvement in Formula 1 with McLaren ended in 2021, Jones says that Gulf were attracted to joining forces with Williams due to the team’s culture.
“We had a great partnership with McLaren, some real highlights,” he said. “The Monaco livery, I guess, being the pinnacle of that.
“But our relationship with McLaren sort of came to a natural end. We achieved everything that we probably could with the McLaren Formula 1 team. And so we started to looking in terms of what was next for us within Gulf for Formula 1. We talked a lot to Williams around their plans, not just for 2023 but for the future. And we really believed that Williams are going in the right direction.
“We believe there’s a lot of good things happening here. It’s very attractive for us as well to have…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…